Using a phone while walking is risky

Walk down practically any street in America and you'll see other pedestrians tapping on touch screens, scrolling through email, talking on cellphones or plugged into mobile music.

Hopefully, the wired walkers will see you — or oncoming traffic if they're crossing the street — before they stroll into an injury.

Cellphone and smartphone use has exploded in the last few years, and two recent national studies show that injuries among pedestrians distracted by their phones have skyrocketed along with their use.

A Liberty Mutual Insurance Pedestrian Safety Survey of more than 1,000 adults, ages 18 to 65, released this month, found that 60 percent of pedestrians walk while texting, emailing, talking on the phone or listening to music, despite 70 percent considering those behaviors to be dangerous.

The study cited a 2011 report from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission that found 1,152 people were treated in hospital emergency rooms after being injured while walking and using a cellphone or other electronic device.

“So much attention has been paid, and rightly so, to distracted driving that we have ignored the fact that distracted walking and crossing can be just as risky,” said David Melton, a Boston-based driving safety expert with Liberty Mutual and managing director of global safety, in a news release.

Another study just released in the August 2013 issue of the journal Accident Analysis and Prevention, by researchers at Ohio State University, found that more than 1,500 pedestrians were estimated to be treated in emergency rooms in 2010 for injuries related to using a cellphone while walking. The number has more than doubled since 2005, even though the total number of pedestrian injuries dropped during that time.

“It's probably not the safest thing,” said Lorraine MacDonald, 47, of Shrewsbury who was texting and checking email as she walked along the sidewalk on Commercial Street in downtown Worcester. She said she puts the phone away before crossing the street, though.

Ms. MacDonald, a nursing faculty member at MCPHS University, said she's used a smartphone for about three years and “does everything” on it, relying on the autocorrect function to facilitate typing while walking.

But she added, “Nobody ever looks at anybody anymore. They're stuck to their phones.”

Another MCPHS faculty member, pharmacist Andrew Szumita of Raynham, was plugging in ear buds to check the scores on sports radio as he approached the crosswalk at Commercial and Foster Streets.

“I've heard the stories about that (distracted pedestrian accidents) so I try to be careful,” Mr. Szumita said. “I try not to play with it when crossing the street, but just listen.”

On Main Street, Ike Prah, 23, who recently moved to Worcester from Philadelphia, said he also mainly listens to his iPhone, enjoying music as he walked down the sidewalk. He said he's seen YouTube videos of people running into things while fiddling with their smartphones, but he's never had an accident.

“I really don't have any technique. I use my peripheral vision and try to focus more,” Mr. Prah said.

MCPHS nursing student Kelly Meehan, 27, admitted she was checking her email as she walked off campus on the Commercial Street sidewalk.

Ms. Meehan said that distracted walking could be hazardous, but she hadn't seen any cases yet of cellphone-related injuries in the emergency room in Connecticut where she works.

Worcester and surrounding towns are starting to examine data looking at pedestrian and occupant motor-vehicle injuries as part of a Community Health Improvement Plan coordinated by the Worcester Division of Public Health.

Dr. Michael P. Hirsh, acting commissioner of public health and surgeon-in-chief of Children's Medical Center at UMass Memorial Medical Center, said that violence and injury prevention were one of the five priority “domains” adopted through an extensive community health assessment over the past two to three years.

He said that while violence was an overarching concern to the community, the data showed that injuries — particularly falls and motor vehicle accidents — caused far more trauma-related hospital admissions and deaths.

Pedestrian injuries are counted as part of overall traffic injuries.

Dr. Hirsh said that as a first step, the city plans to look at GPS mapping of pedestrian injuries to see where the most dangerous locations are. That data should be available in six to 12 months.

Anecdotally, Dr. Hirsh said that at UMass Memorial, “We've had a number of episodes with teens crossing the street, texting and getting hit.”

He said these accidents have taken place from Worcester's Park Avenue to a boarding school campus in Connecticut, where a group of teens were injured while walking and texting.

“I'm just amazed at how people cross the street,” Dr. Hirsh said. “It's quite a rising menace (distracted pedestrians), I'd bet, but we don't have the data yet. But I think we will.”

Dr. Hirsh noted that the marked increase in pedestrian injuries was discussed at a conference he attended in New York City, which recently added bike lanes to streets.

“Their theory in New York is there's a new bicycle lane law and pedestrians are tangling just as much with bikes as they are with cars,” he said.

The trend may be growing in this area, too, as more people take to bikes and walking to public transportation, presenting more obstacles for drivers and other pedestrians.

But Terrel Harris, spokesman for the state Executive Office of Public Safety, said: “We're trying to get people to stop texting and driving. Distracted walking? It's not on our top priority list.”

Dr. Hirsh wasn't surprised that distracted walking hasn't made it to everyone's radar screen yet. “It sneaks up on you,” he said. “Even five years ago, cellphones weren't so ubiquitous as now.”

Mary M. Maguire, director of public and legislative affairs for AAA of Southern New England, said, “We caution drivers all the time about distraction and the need to focus 100 percent on the road so you can see when a pedestrian steps out from behind a car. ... With more bikes and pedestrians out there, pedestrians need to be paying close attention, as well, to potential hazards.”

She said, “Multi-tasking has become the norm. We're not as focused and efficient as when we focus on one thing at a time. We all need to ask ourselves, 'Is this call or this text really necessary?' ”

The message to pay attention in roadways has to start early, safety experts say.

John Paul, AAA's manager of traffic safety, said the association's Walk Safe program for children in kindergarten through Grade 5 covers cellphones and MP3 music players as sources of distraction.

“We always include the idea that they're not going to be able to hear, they'll be distracted,” he said.

“Parents already teach their children to look both ways when crossing the street,” said Jack Nasar, co-author of the Ohio State study and professor of city and regional planning, in a news release.

“They should also teach them to put away their cellphone when walking, particularly when crossing a street.”

Contact Susan Spencer at susan.spencer@telegram.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanSpencerTG.